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Enemy Unknown: An X-COM Retrospective

X-COM proved to be an unexpected hit when it arrived on PC in 1994. Buoyed by positive reviews and word of mouth, it soon garnered a loyal fanbase. Hungry for a hit after its acquisition by Spectrum Holobyte the previous year, Microprose approached Julian Gollop about designing a sequel.

Gollop ultimately licensed the code to Microprose, which was in turn handed off to an internal development team lead in part by Stephen Goss, later a design manager for Batman: Arkham City. The plan was to hold the fans with a quickie sequel in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, then hit them with a true successor from Gollop, which became X-COM: Apocalypse. Both were problematic in their own way, and ultimately dragged down a franchise that had once promised to become a pillar of PC gaming.

A Cash Grab from the Deep

As it turned out, Terror from the Deep was developed in one year -- not the six months demanded by Microprose. Early advertisements depicting a clawed, green hand reaching up from the depths seemed to promise a whole new gameplay paradigm, as well as a terrifying new alien race; but for the most part, it was not to be. Instead, Terror from the Deep played much the same as UFO Defense, but with an underwater makeover that had little impact on the gameplay.

Its primary mandate was to be harder than the original, which might seem odd until you realize that many fans unknowingly played the original on the easiest difficulty setting due to a particular bug. As such, the enemy sports somewhat more advanced A.I., enabling them to flank attacks on player-controlled tactical teams. Many of the aliens also have a high number of hitpoints, making them tougher to take down. And as a final twist, Terror from the Deep will occasionally bring the action back to dry land, where certain weapons become useless.

Apart from the new aliens though, these are pretty much the extent of the changes, which makes Terror from the Deep feel something like a full-priced mission pack. The lack of additional content was all the more apparent in the fact that grenades worked pretty much as they did in UFO Defense, and that troopers could take a bullet through their diving helmet without succumbing to water pressure. It also had its own share of bugs -- researching the Tasoth Commander, for instance, would make the game unwinnable.

Terror from the Deep's main virtue is that it provides a new challenge for veterans while expanding upon the original's creepy universe with several ideas of its own (the Lovecraftian Tentaculat -- essentially a flying Cryssalid shaped like the Flying Spaghetti Monster-- still provides shudders). The apocalyptic end also serves to set the stage for Apocalypse, which goes much further than Terror from the Deep in serving up a new experience. But while it garnered its share of praise, it also came off as something of a manic cash grab by Microprose.

The Apocalyptic End of an Era

At first blush, X-COM: Apocalypse seems to bring a lot of neat new ideas to the table. Set some 50 years after the end of Terror from the Deep, it features a world that has been completely reconfigured by disaster. The action shifted from a global battlefield to a massive, self-contained city built over the ruins of Toronto, Canada, with the main goal being to combat extraterrestrial invaders without causing undo damage in the process. Politics play an even bigger role in Apocalypse, as you must work to maintain good relations with not just the government, but a host of large corporations as well.

The new concept brings to mind the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which features its own self-contained city, marauding aliens, and shadowy organizations. It's even possible to go rogue in Apocalypse, much like NERV in End of Evangelion. The difference is that Apocalypse is flexible enough that it's actually possible to win as a renegade, provided that you can raise your own capital while staving off raids from hostile organizations.

In some ways though, Apocalypse tries to do too much. One of its biggest changes is the introduction of a realtime tactical mode, which elicited widespread fear from strategy purists that X-COM was going the way of Command & Conquer. It might have been better if it had gone that way though, because Gollop's refusal to completely commit to either model results in a realtime mode that loses the tension of the original game, and a turn-based mode that suffers from AI that is clearly tuned for realtime combat.

The other point of contention are the graphics, which were handled by Microprose as part of their deal with Gollop for Apocalypse. In a 2010 interview with Eurogamer, Gollop said Microprose had some "rather fancy, expensive ideas," such as creating physical models of the aliens and scanning them into the game. The result ended up being rather ugly, and fans and critics complained that Apocalyse's new, brighter colors detracted from the creepiness of the first two games. Graphical fidelity typically isn't paramount in strategy games, but much of X-COM's tension was derived from the mood created by its murky graphics. Apocalypse had big dreams, but it lost something in its more colorful art shift.

Apocalypse was to be Gollop's final collaboration with the Microprose on the series he had created. After it was completed, he packed his bags and went to Virgin to work on Magic & Mayhem. Microprose, meanwhile, retained the license, but had little idea what to do with it.

The Space Wilderness

With Gollop gone, Microprose tried to keep the X-COM brand afloat by experimenting with new genres. By this time, Hasbro Interactive had purchased Microprose, and there was wild talk of X-COM toys, comics, and cartoon shows. Ultimately, four games would be proposed, only two of which would see release.

The series had its vocal proponents within Microprose -- X-COM: Interceptor designer Dave Ellis foremost among them -- but the franchise was afflicted by poor management and an overall lack of focus. The most ambitious of the bunch -- a promising first-person shooter based on the Unreal engine called X-COM: Alliance -- was a money sink before it was ultimately canceled. A series reboot called X-COM: Genesis was likewise canceled when Hasbro Interactive abruptly shut down the Chapel Hill Studio.

Of the games that were released, the space combat sim X-COM: Interceptor suffered from repetitive mission structure and an extremely high difficulty level, especially compared to contemporaries like Descent: Freespace. X-COM: Enforcer was a serviceable third-person shooter, but its lack of strategy and bizarre, cartoonish story meant that it had little in common with the original game. Both were met with mixed reviews, and Interceptor only sold about 30,000 copies.

The franchise went on hiatus after Enforcer, and remained dormant for much of the next decade. But as we'll discuss in Part 3, a vocal fanbase did much to keep the memory of X-COM alive. And as strategy gaming experienced a rebirth in the latter part of the decade, the stage was set for a comeback.